The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #87853 Message #1645582
Posted By: Bob Bolton
10-Jan-06 - 08:01 AM
Thread Name: Tune Req: The Free Mason's Song
Subject: Lyric Add: The Free Mason's Song (bawdy Burns)
G'day ...
... since we seem to be beset with those who only read / know /accept the "Naice, polite" Burns - here is the full text of the entry to which Phyl refers (from The Merry Muses (Ed. Eric Lemuel Randall, Luxor Press, London, 1966 ... as I noted above). This is not the "polite" Masonic Song, as Phyl has made clear (to me ... ay least ...):
89. A MASONIC SONG
[TUNE: The Free Mason's Song (see Ramsay's Tea- Table Miscellany)
This song, like the preceding one, appeared for the first time, as part of a Merry Muses collection, in Legman's 1965 edition. It is taken from a manuscript collection of Scottish Burlesque and Jocular Songs made by George Kinloch, a contemporary of Cunningham's. That anthology was 'smuggled' to America and is still housed in the Harvard Library. The Kinloch MS collection ends with two songs of which this is one and THE PATRIARCH, which follows this (No. 90), therein called A WICKED SONG, is the other.
The story behind A MASONIC SONG, Kinloch says, is that 'Bums was called on for a song at a Mason Lodge, and wrote the following extempore and sang it. A friend asked for a copy next day, when he sent A MASONIC SONG, by Robert Burns.' The word 'extempore' may he taken with a grain of salt, for it is known that Bums, in sending fair copies of poems to friends, commonly pretended they were spontaneous effusions when in reality they had been subjected to much painstaking revision.
Note, first of all, that once again Burns writes from the woman's point of view. In this case the poem's most remarkable feature, however, is the ingenious way in which he invests references to the characteristics of masonic insignia with symbolic sexual significance. The 'singer', identifying himself as a woman relating an erotic experience, refers to the secret pleasures of sexual union as the arcana of masonic mystique, and describes how her lover, in leading her to the climax of sensual delight, by a special 'dispensation' initiated her as a fellow mason.
It happened on a winter night And early in the season, Somebody said my bonny lad Was gone to be a Mason.
Fal de ral, etc....
I cried and wailed, but nought availed: He put a forward face on And did avow that he was now A free accepted Mason.
Fal de ral, etc. ...
Still doubting if the fact was true, He gave me demonstration: For out he drew before my view The jewels of a Mason.
Fal de ral, etc. ...
The Jewels all, baith¹ great and small, I viewed with admiration; When he set his siege and drew his gauge I wondered at my Mason.
Fal de ral, etc. ...
His compass stride he laid it wide - I thought I guessed the reason But his mallet shaft it put me daft²: I longed to be a Mason.
Fal de ral, etc. ...
Good plummets strong he downward hung A noble jolly brace on, And off aslant his broacher sent And drove it like a Mason.
Fal de ral, etc. ...
But the tempered steel began to fail, Too soft for the occasion: It melted plain, he drove so keen, My gallant noble Mason.
Fal de ral, etc. ...
So pleased was I to see him ply The tools of his vocation, I begg'd for once he would dispense And make a maid a Mason.
Fal de ral, etc. ...
Then round and round in mystic ground He took the middle station, And with halting pace he reached the place Where I was made a Mason.
Fal de ral, etc. ...
Then more and more the light did pour With bright illumination; But when the grip he did me slip, I gloried in my Mason.
Fal de ral, etc. ...
What further passed is here locked fast: I'm under obligation; But fill to him, up to the brim, Can³ make a maid a Mason!